Ayano's Protection Theory
by 46neko
Summary: Sometimes even the best-laid plans go wrong. But maybe surviving the Heat Haze wasn't so bad: they had saved two children from suffering any more. Still, Ayano hadn't forgotten her original purpose for jumping off of that roof...
1. Chapter 1

**So, I wrote this cause I couldn't bear the thought of Ayano dying forever D':**

**Hope you guys like it!**

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Ayano was... startled, to say the least. One minute she had been peacefully dreaming about her crush, Shintarō Kisaragi, and then the next her little brother Shūya was jumping up and down on her bed, yelling at her to get up.

After she recovered from her scare, she smiled at her adopted little brother. "All right, all right, I'm getting up. Give it a rest, Shūya."

"Shouldn't Oneechan be more excited for her first day of high school?" Shūya asked his older sister.

Ayano smiled her usual smile again. "I am excited. I can't wait to be in the same school as Takane-senpai and Haruka-senpai!"

"So then, let's go!" Shūya leapt off the bed and bounded out of the door to his older sister's room. Ayano shook her head fondly at her hyperactive little brother.

Shūya continued being loud on the walk to school, while Ayano's other adopted siblings, Kōsuke and Tsubomi, tried to quiet him. Kōsuke was gently persuading him, while Tsubomi had given up on that already and now had him in a headlock.

They were all twelve already, but, if anything, they acted less mature than they had when Ayano had first met them. Tsubomi was incredibly smart: she knew even more than Ayano, who was two years older than her. She had grown up in a wealthy family, so she'd had an extensive education… _Oh, stop kidding yourself, Ayano. You're just dumb_, Ayano told herself. But she didn't let her low test scores get her down. In her opinion, she had the best life anyone could ever ask for. Well, other than her mother dying. She had the most wonderful family, and her friends… well, some of them could be difficult sometimes, but they were so genuinely caring.

Speaking of her friends, one of them was waiting for her on the corner of his street. "Bye, Oneechan!" Ayano's three siblings chorused at the same time, and then dashed off. "Wait, where are you –" Ayano started to ask, but they had already disappeared.

She scratched her head embarrassedly as she walked up to Shintarō. "Ah, thanks for waiting for me, Shintarō-kun!" she grinned.

"Hn." He acknowledged her with a grunt and began walking. Ayano had to jog to match his speed, with his long legs.

"Can you slow down a little?" she panted. Shintarō looked back at her with a blank expression. "Oh, sorry." He allowed her to catch up to him.

"So, are you looking forward to starting high school?" she asked him. He shrugged. "I guess. I just hope it'll be a good change from junior high."

"What, you didn't like spending time with me in junior high?" Ayano asked, hurt.

"No, no! I mean, I-I didn't mind it…" Shintarō looked away. Ayano was glad he did, so that he wouldn't see the blush on her face.

Suddenly, she was slapped hard on the back, nearly falling on her face. "Yo, Aya-kōhai!" a familiar voice greeted her cheerfully. Ayano looked up to see two black pigtails. "Ah, Takane-senpai," Ayano tried to match her senior's enthusiasm, but she was still reeling from the pain. "Please don't greet me like this every day," she groaned.

"Oh, did I hurt you? I'm sorry," Takane sheepishly rubbed the back of her head.

Ayano then spotted the boy standing behind her. "Ah, Haruka-senpai! Good morning!"

"Morning, Ayano-san," Haruka replied. "Morning, ah… Shintarō-san, right?"

"Yeah… you're the guy from the video game stand, aren't you?" Shintarō asked him. He and Ayano had met Haruka and Takane during the high school festival last year, when he had challenged Takane at the video game she had created. He had won, as expected.

"Oh! You're that jerk who… beat me at that video game…" Takane's sunny mood immediately turned dark, and she turned away from Shintarō to sulk. Haruka tried to comfort her, and Ayano followed him. Shintarō ignored all of them and stared straight ahead at the school, which was now visible over the horizon.

_I wonder if I'll be in the same class as Ayano again. I hope so_… His pride would never let him admit it, but he liked Ayano. She filled his day with excitement. Unlike her, he aced school. He didn't even have to try. While Ayano complained about how difficult school was, Shintarō was bored by how quickly he got everything, and how much time everyone else needed.

But despite his cold attitude, Ayano had become his first friend. He remembered how it had happened: two years ago, they had just gotten the results for their final exams back, and Ayano had asked him what mark he'd received. He'd shown her the perfect 100% score at the top of his paper. She, in turn, had sheepishly shown him the 56% on hers. Then she had asked him to help her.

Shintarō had accepted, thinking that he would just have to go over a few concepts with her, and that would be it. But, at the time, he didn't realize that not everyone had an IQ of 168. Sometimes he was still at the school at 10 in the night tutoring her.

But, after a while, he found that he didn't mind the long lengths of these study sessions so much anymore. In fact, they had even started to become the highlight of his day.

He hoped that things could still be this way in high school. He had told Ayano that he wanted it to be different, yes: but he'd just meant that he wanted to keep everything he had, but have it be even better.

He knew that he was asking for a lot. He already had a good enough life, other than his father dying, and he had a bright future ahead of him. But you can never be too happy, right?

Shintarō shook his head. Why was he being so sentimental today? Must be the heat.

"We're finally here!" Shintarō heard Takane exclaim. He looked up at the school, which now looked smaller than he had remembered it. When he had first seen this school, he had still been in junior high, and everything had seemed bigger to him.

Shintarō was jolted out of his thoughts by a hand grabbing his wrist. He looked up to see Ayano grinning at him, and his heart skipped a beat. "Come on, let's go!" she pulled him into the school.

* * *

Ayano laid a hand on the metal grills of the gate to the graveyard, and pushed. They creaked open, and she began to make her way over to her mother's grave.

She placed a bouquet of flowers on top of the stone marked _Ayaka Tateyama_. Then she began to pull out the weeds that had started to spring up. When she had finished, she sat down.

"Hi, Okāsan," she smiled. "How was your day today?" Ayano knew that her mother wasn't able to answer her, but Ayaka had liked it when her daughter asked her how her day was, so Ayano did it anyway.

"Today was my first day of high school," she continued. "Have I told you about Takane-senpai and Haruka-senpai? I don't think I have. Shintarō-kun and I met them last year at the festival for the high school. They were running a video game booth, and you know how Shintarō-kun loves video games." Ayano smiled. "Takane really likes playing, too. She's really fun to be around, but she has an illness that makes her tired most of the time. Haruka-senpai does, too. But he's really nice. He likes drawing, just like you, Kāsan."

Ayano sighed at the memory of her mother's drawings. "Okāsan, why did you have to die?" she whispered, burying her face in her hands.

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**Review please, and check out my other stories if you watch Naruto! ^^**


	2. Chapter 2

**I haven't updated in a long time... I'm sorry X/**

**But arghhhh that ending to Mekakucity Actors! It didn't explain _anything_! I'm so mad : **

**Anyways, thanks to Kazuma Ryouga and Ari-chan for reviewing! ****Here's chapter 2!**

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As Ayano walked home from the graveyard, she thought of all the happy times that she had spent with her mother. Ayaka had been her alarm clock: Ayano was even less of a morning person than Shintarō, which was saying something. Ayaka used to always cook her scrambled eggs in the morning. Her scrambled eggs were the _best_. She had taught Ayano to cook, since Ayano's father couldn't make a meal to save his life.

Both of Ayano's parents were archaeologists, and they took their research very seriously, often working for twelve hours. But Ayaka always made time to read Ayano a story before she went to bed. Ayaka's favourite story was one about a monster who wanted to find out why she existed. The monster asked humans to help her find the answer, but the humans were afraid of her and attacked her. So the monster took revenge on the humans. After she killed many of them, she decided to go live in the forest all by herself. Then, one day, the monster met another human. But this human was different: other humans considered him a monster, because of his appearance. The human befriended the monster, and soon they fell in love and started a family. But the monster was immortal, and her husband and child were not. The monster feared the day that she would have to part with her family. Then, one day, a snake came to her in a dream, and told her to create a never-ending world that she and her family could live. So the monster did, and she and her family lived happily ever after.

Ayano was jolted out of her thoughts when she arrived at her front door. She unlocked it and called, "Is anybody home?"

There was no answer. Ayano shrugged, took her shoes off and began to make her way to her room.

As she passed her father's bedroom in the hallway, she felt a slight breeze coming from inside. She peered into the room, and saw that the window was open, and the wind was blowing her father's papers all over the room. _I'd better close it, before something flies out_, Ayano thought. Her father had gotten angry at her the last time that she had entered his room without his permission, but she was sure that he would be grateful to her for saving his research.

As Ayano was closing the window, a picture caught her eye. It was the cover of the book that her mother had always read to her: the Legend of Medusa. Ayano picked up the book and fingered it fondly. She smiled at the memory of listening to her mother's voice read, snuggled up against her in the warm covers of the bed.

_"The monster summoned up all of her power and created a new world. In this new world, the monster was with her beloved family, and they lived happily ever after."_

Ayano loved the ending to that story.

She was about to set the book back down when she noticed the book that had been underneath it. It was filled with her mother's handwriting.

_A journal? Why didn't Otōsan tell me about this_? Ayano frowned.

Then her eyes widened as she read the entry that was on the open page.

_The monster exists. And after speaking to people from around the town where it lived, I found out that the ending to the story is incorrect. What actually happened was that the snake who came to the monster in her dream convinced her to go live in her new world alone. Well, not exactly alone: she selected some people who had died to enter it with her, and then spit them out again, given them powers. It is unknown what the selection process is, but I know that Tsubomi, Kōsuke and Shūya were some of the people who were chosen_.

Ayano's eyes were huge. But now that she thought of it, everything matched up perfectly. She had just pushed the strange aspects of her three little siblings to the back of her mind, more focused on helping them than finding out the reasons for their abnormalities.

When Ayano's parents had brought them home from the orphanage, Ayano's three little siblings had told her about their red eyes, and how they hated them. They had told her how they had all brushed shoulders with death. She hadn't thought of a connection between the two at the time, just passing off their eye colour as a genetic anomaly. Her siblings had thought that they were monsters, and Ayano had comforted them, but never had she been so sure that they were human.

Ayano fingered the red scarf around her neck, which she had used to tell her siblings that red was the colour of a hero. She would have to ask them what exactly happened when they almost died.

Suddenly, Ayano heard the door slam. "Ayano? Are you home?" her father's voice called.

Ayano's eyes widened. If her father had hidden her mother's journal from her, it meant that he didn't want her to read it. She quickly put the _Legend of Medusa_ book back on top of the journal, and busied herself with collecting the papers that had been strewn all over her father's room from the wind.

She suddenly stopped when she spotted the faces of her new friends: Takane and Haruka. Curious as to why her father kept pictures of his students in his room, she stopped in her gathering of papers and took a closer look at the clipboard, which their photos were attached to with two clips. The clips looked remarkably like her mother's, which Ayano now wore in her own hair.

Her eyes widened in horror as she read the paper underneath the pictures. Her father was planning on sacrificing his students to bring snakes from the Medusa's world into this one.

_What… why would Otōsan want to do that_? Ayano searched desperately for an answer. She found one in the last line.

_I just want to free Ayaka from that world_.

"Eh? What are you doing in my room?" Ayano's father's voice sounded from the doorway.

Ayano moved her body to hide the clipboard from her father's view, discreetly shoving it under a pile of papers. "Ah…" she searched quickly for an excuse. In her panic, she had forgotten why she had entered his room in the first place. Then she remembered. "Oh! I was just closing your window! The wind was blowing your papers all over the place, so I thought that I'd close it before something flew out."

"Oh. Well, thanks," her father said. Ayano let out a silent sigh of relief. "Anyway, Seto's hungry, so can you start on dinner now?"

"Yeah, sure," Ayano answered. Then she turned to make her way over to the kitchen.

"Nē, Ayano?" her father asked. Ayano froze in her tracks. "H-hai?" she squeaked out.

But her father just said, "Thanks for always helping out."

Ayano forced a smile. "You're welcome," she replied, and gently shut the door behind her.

So her siblings were home, huh?

* * *

Shūya heard three knocks sound on his bedroom door. "Come in!" he called.

His older sister poked her head in. "Shūya, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Um, yeah, sure," Shūya was surprised.

Ayano sat down on her little brother's bed. "I know this might be hard, but… can you describe to me exactly what happened when you almost died?"

Shūya's eyes widened. His sister never asked them to talk about their near-death experiences. She was too kind-hearted for that. So she must have a good reason for doing so now.

"Um, well… I don't really remember much… just that it was sort of like being swallowed up by a bad dream." Yes, that was an appropriate description for what he had experienced. "And then I woke up in the hospital. They said it was a miracle that I was alive."

"They said that?" Ayano frowned in concentration.

"Um, yeah…" Shūya replied, thoroughly confused. "Why?"

Ayano ignored his question. "And your eyes… they began turning red right after that happened?"

Shūya thought back. "Yes. Onēchan, why are you asking me all of these questions?"

Ayano smiled at him, but this time, her smile was filled with sadness. "You'll find out someday, Shūya. Good night." She then left the room, leaving Shūya to puzzle over her words.

* * *

It was a bright and sunny day, contrasting with the emotions flooding through Ayano as she stood at the top of her school. _Shūya, Tsubomi and Kōsuke all said that it was a miracle that they'd survived. Alongside their descriptions of being swallowed up by a nightmare, that must have meant that they did actually die to get their powers_…

She tried to reassure herself, but uncertainty still prevented her from jumping. Finally, she just told herself, _Well, if you don't do anything, then Takane-senpai and Haruka-senpai are going to die for sure. So you might as well just try_…

She closed her eyes and jumped.

Suddenly, she felt something grab her wrist. She opened her eyes to find herself dangling over the edge of the building, stopped by a hand. But she couldn't see who it was.

Then the person yelled, "Ayano!" Ayano's eyes widened when she recognized the voice.

It was Shintarō.

"Shintarō, let me go," Ayano surprised even herself hearing how calm her voice was.

"No," Shintarō asserted. He then began to try to pull Ayano back up.

"Then I'll just have to make you," Ayano retorted, and began to struggle out of Shintarō's grasp. It was a lot easier for her than for him, and she soon felt herself falling again.

She smiled sadly. "Goodbye, Shintarō-kun."

Then her eyes widened in horror as she saw a figure in a red jersey diving after her.

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**Review please!**


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